For A Woman’s Conquest I already have a written synopsis because I’ve been working on it for a while. It began as a pet project, and so I ran away with the synopsis, it didn’t need to have a lot of detail just yet, it just needed a beginning and an end. Now I’m preparing it to enter a writing competition, and so I need to refine it. I have my notebook and I have characters finding their own spots in my mind. It’s coming to life.

The first thing to do is get the first three chapters written, and I’ve more or less achieved that in the past week. Which is great for me, because I actually achieved a writing goal in a timely manner. Whilst I’ve been writing the first three chapters, I’ve also been refining character, world-building and plot. Sometimes there’s only so much you can refine before you need to write to keep improving it, and so that’s where I’m up to with the beginning of the novel.

The main character of this project is Princess Tolua Heleni Faelosi, a little girl who was born with everything and just wants to escape it. The reason it started out as a pet project is because it’s a “reincarnation/transmigration” story. A failed writer in her previous life, she now seeks to escape what she knows is going to be a turbulent and short life of misery and fear: the imperial family. Currently, the youngest child of the emperor, and with her mother having passed not long after childbirth, Tolly has to navigate the life of royalty and survive her siblings and consort step-mothers if she ever intends on getting out alive. The plan is simple, get power and wealth, and flee. But when she finds that she’s a bit more blessed than her elder siblings, she wonders if she can really let the empire fall into their bloodied hands.